Select Fire Beretta Pistols Part 2
The same but different
By Dennis Adler

Crosman has picked up the gauntlet dropped by Gletcher with the new Full Auto P1. However, as you can tell from this photo (regardless of perspective) the Crosman is a larger gun than the Umarex Beretta, which is proportioned exactly like its centerfire counterpart. It is a small difference in size and the weight of the guns is close, with the Umarex weighing 2 pounds, 7 ounces, and the Crosman 2 pounds, 8 ounces. Unable to bear the Beretta name, which is licensed to Umarex, there is no patent on the design, which is used by other CO2 and centerfire pistol manufacturers like Swiss Arms and Taurus (with the PT-92).
The vast majority of blowback action CO2 models work about the same way with the main difference being whether the guns have a fixed barrel, like small to medium caliber blowback action centerfire pistols, the Walther PPK being a good example, or a version of the John Browning-designed, short-recoil, locked-breech, tilting barrel design used in most medium to large caliber centerfire pistols. The Beretta 92 Series is one of the few exceptions because of several distinctive Beretta designs, first the open slide with most of the barrel exposed, secondly, the 92 Series (and some of its earlier Beretta predecessors) do not have a feed ramp between the magazine and chamber, and third, the guns use a falling locking block design with the barrel traveling in-line during recoil, rather than tilting down, like the Browning design. This also makes the Beretta one of the easiest handguns to fieldstrip, and all three of the CO2 models take down exactly the same way as the 9mm pistol.